Ronan Bennett is the author of The Catastrophist and co-author of Stolen Years, Paul Hill’s account of his trial and imprisonment after the Guildford and Woolwich bombings.
MORE BY THIS CONTRIBUTOR
RELATED ARTICLES
6 October 1994
Diary
25 June 1987
Noel Russell talks to Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, and writes about the state of the IRA
11 July 2002
Back to Bloody Sunday
6 September 2001
On Northern Ireland
2 September 1999
On the way ahead in Ireland
30 July 1998
On the new future of Northern Ireland
23 March 1995
On the Threshold
RELATED CATEGORIES
Europe, Western Europe, UK, Northern Ireland, Europe, Western Europe, UK, Belfast, War, Politics and economics
Vol. 16 No. 18 · 22 September 1994
page 25 | 2549 words
Diary
Ronan Bennett
I am listening to the radio, only half awake. Some hammy old actor is camping it up in one of those overblown plays about the ‘Troubles’. In tones of high theatricality he sets the sinister scene: the Falls Road, Belfast, just after midnight; one of the most dangerous corners in Europe if you happen to be unaccompanied and of the wrong religion. I assume it’s an adaptation of some Gerald Seymour novel and reach over to turn the radio off. Then I recognise the voice – it’s John Humphrys on Today. I concentrate. On the Falls, apparently, men with hard, cold eyes used to stare sullenly from behind the iron railings that surround the pubs and clubs, planning their next operation.
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 16 No. 20 · 20 October 1994
From Brian Lynch
Even making allowances for Ronan Bennett’s ignorance of politics in this republic (for instance, Conor Cruise O’Brien was not the architect of the 1976 Criminal Law Bill, principally because there was no such Bill), his calumniation of Conor Cruise O’Brien and exaltation of Gerry Adams are contemptible (LRB, 22 September). Bennett says that ‘for nearly ten years, Adams has been … working to take the gun out of Irish politics.’ In fact, for much of that time, Adams, following the explicit policy of Sinn Fein, was committed to ‘unambiguous support for the armed struggle’ of the IRA. Bennett sneers at the British media for portraying Adams as ‘a cunning devious liar’, but if Adams was saying one thing and believing another he wasn’t, you know, telling the truth. Some of the simpler lads who took him at his word might take a dim view of that in their prison cells. As for Bennett’s slurs on Conor Cruise O’Brien, all that needs to be said is that for twenty-five years Dr O’Brien has spoken out against political murder and urged the reconciliation of Nationalists and Unionists on this island. There are no innocent people dead here or in your country as the result of what Bennett calls Dr O’Brien’s ‘self-promoted wisdom’, but Adams has blood, if not literally on his hands, then certainly on his conscience.
Brian Lynch
Killiney, Co Dublin
From Nicolas Walter
Ronan Bennett’s Diary is a good example of the way left-wing papers give a hearing to the voice of terrorism. With all due respect for the genuine grievances of the Catholics in Northern Ireland and of the Protestants in Ireland and of the Irish in the British Isles (and with all due contempt for the rulers who have oppressed them and the crooks who have swindled them and the media who have humiliated them), the great majorities of all these groups have not employed or supported violence when they have had other means of expression, and the political parties representing terrorist organisations have received only small minorities of the votes from their respective communities. Yet we are now asked to take seriously one of the terrorist parties because it says it is going to stop terrorism. We are even told: ‘For nearly ten years, Adams has been saying to anyone who would listen that he was working to take the gun out of Irish politics.’ That is nice, but who put the gun back into Irish politics and kept it there for twenty-five years? What about all the people in Northern Ireland who are still being intimidated by the protection rackets and the armed gangs of the terrorist parties? By all means welcome the peace process, and expose those trying to exploit it, but don’t pretend that terrorists are part of it.
Nicolas Walter
London N1
From John O’Callaghan
I am grateful to Ronan Bennett for his Ceasefire Diary and would be intrigued to read a piece by him on the argument that the violence that ushered in Irish independence was less justified than the campaign now ended.
John O’Callaghan
St Léonard, France
